Indian Home Minister has postponed his scheduled visit to Russian Federation and the United States in the wake of the attack in Uri and the unrest in Jammu and Kashmir.
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Army officials said the rebels had infiltrated into the Indian side of Kashmir from the Pakistani-controlled part. Responding to the attack, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the attackers would not be spared.
Singh said that since some of the “items” the militants carried bore Pakistani markings, he had called up his Pakistani counterpart to express “serious concern”.
Asserting that the sacrifice of the soldiers, who lost their lives in the terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Uri Sector will not go in vain, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday said that India will give a befitting reply to Pakistan and it will have to bear the brunt.
Uri is 70km from Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, and over 100km from Srinagar, and is located on the highway connecting the two cities.
He also accused India of using different tactics to divert the world attention from the situation in the Kashmir Valley, where over 80 civilians have been killed in clashes between protesters and security forces since July 9. They added that the raiders seemed to have been from the Jaish-e-Mohammad, the group that had attacked the Pathankot airbase in Punjab in January, killing seven personnel. A majority of the soldiers, who were sleeping, were trapped in the fire and died due to burns.
The pre-dawn attack – one of the deadliest of its kind in recent years – surprised soldiers in their sleep as the heavily-armed terrorists first attacked a diesel-refilling unit, lobbing 17 grenades in 3 minutes, sparking a blaze that burnt many tents in a 150-metre area. “My thoughts are with the bereaved families”, Modi said.
India has blamed Pakistan-based militant groups for a string of attacks on its territory – including an assault on Mumbai in 2008 that killed 166 people. The attack on the Indian Air Force base there has since become a major global diplomatic incident.
Most of the soldiers died yesterday after their tents and other housing caught fire during the raid on the brigade headquarters near the border known as the Line of Control (LoC), said Ranbir Singh, the army’s director-general of military operations. In a series of tweet, Mr Mukherjee said, India will thwart the evil designs of terrorists and their backers.
Pakistan denied any involvement, but observers believed it was likely aimed at drawing worldwide attention to unrest in Kashmir. “A response therefore has to be forcefully enunciated”, said G. Parthasarathy, former High Commissioner of India to Pakistan.
“We strongly condemn the cowardly terror attack in Uri”.
Sources in the security establishment said many options are under consideration including surgical action at a tactical level on the LoC.
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Top sources in the ministry of home affairs told Mail Today that intelligence agencies have warned of another potential suicide squad in Kashmir: “Our information is that there is another group of terrorists launched to hit vital assets in or around Srinagar closer to Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s address at the United Nations General Assembly”.
